Aeolosaurini is an extinct clade of

titanosaur Titanosaurs (or titanosaurians; members of the group Titanosauria) were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from all seven continents. The titanosaurs were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods, with taxa still th ...

ian dinosaurs known from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

period of

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...

and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Rodrigo M. Santucci and Antonio C. de Arruda-Campos (2011) in their

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived ch ...

analysis found ''

Aeolosaurus ''Aeolosaurus'' (; "Aeolus' lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. Like most sauropods, it would have been a quadrupedal herbivore with a long neck and tail. ''Aeolosa ...

'', ''

Gondwanatitan ''Gondwanatitan'' (meaning "giant from Gondwana") was a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. ''Gondwanatitan'' was found in Brazil, at the time part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, in the late Cretaceous Period (70 mya). Like some other sau ...

'', '' Maxakalisaurus'', '' Panamericansaurus'' and '' Rinconsaurus'' to be aeolosaurids. Aeolosaurini is characterized by several

synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to hav ...

of the caudal vertebrae, such as angled centra, elongate prezygapophyses, and neural arches shifted anteriorly relative to the centra. In life, their tails may have been strongly curved downward as a result of these traits, which may have increased the force exerted by the caudofemoralis longus muscle in retracting the hindlimb. Some aeolosaurins, such as ''Shingopana'' and ''Overosaurus'', were relatively small compared to other titanosaurs, whereas others, such as ''Aeolosaurus maximus'', were large.

Phylogeny

Aeolosaurini was defined by Franco-Rosas, Salgado, Rosas and Carvalho (2004) as the

stem-based taxon Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional approach, in which taxon names are defined by a ''type'', which c ...

that corresponds to the most-inclusive clade containing ''Aeolosaurus rionegrinus'' and ''Gondwanatitan faustoi'', but not ''

Saltasaurus loricatus ''Saltasaurus'' (which means "lizard from Salta") is a genus of saltasaurid dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous period of Argentina. Small among sauropods, though still heavy by the standards of modern creatures, ''Saltasaurus'' was characteriz ...

'' and ''

Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii ''Opisthocoelicaudia'' is a genus of sauropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous Period discovered in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. The type species is ''Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii''. A well-preserved skeleton lacking only the head and neck ...

''.Franco-Rosas, A. C.; ''et al.'' (2004). Nuevos materiales de titanosaurios (Sauropoda) en el Cretácico Superior de Mato Grosso, Brasil ew materials of titanosaurs (Sauropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Mato Grosso, Brazil ''Revista Brasileira de Paleontologia''. 7(3): 329-336. Below is a

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

showing the phylogenetic relationships of Aeolosaurini-based Santucci and Arruda-Campos (2011), from Franca ''et al.'' (2016) on the left, and Silva ''et al.'' (2019) on the right.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2334389 Lithostrotians